Paige by Annette Lyon

Paige by Annette Lyon

After a bitter divorce from her unfaithful husband, Paige moves from Utah to California with her two little boys and vows to make a fresh start. She finds a job at a dental practice that helps her get back on her feet, but it’s the friends she makes at her new book club who help her realize how strong she is and who give her support to carry on as she faces the challenges of being a single mom. She also meets Derryl, a wonderful, kind, attentive man who treats her right—something her ex never did. Yet, Paige struggles to figure out who she is as a woman rather than a wife, how to help her boys adjust to a broken home, and whether she can ever trust a man or love again. As Paige leans on the book club ladies and Derryl’s ever-present care, one thing becomes clear: healing from the past requires more than a change of address.   

After reading two other books in the Newport Ladies book Club I not exactly sure what to say about Paige. The plot is much similar to the other two books in that many of the major events are the same, and several others were hinted at in the storyline in Daisy’s novel. The book is different in the fact that Paige is a divorced LDS woman having a hard time finding a place to fit in, and so she joins the book club to find friends. She becomes close to Daisy, who also knows what it is like to be a single mom.

She also starts dating a non-member named Derryl who serves as the love interest in the book. He is kind and handsome and endearing, but I was kind of disappointed not necessarily in the fact that Derryl and Paige didn’t get together, but in that he seemed kind of pointless to the plot. Since Derryl and Paige don’t get together his sole meaning in the narrative to teach Paige that she needs to break up with him so she can spend more time on herself, spend more time with her kids, and aim for marrying a Mormon. Except for these are all the kind of surface answers that were basically no brainer from the beginning.

So, I am disappointed in the fact that the character arc in this story fell flat for me. I feel like the book ends where it should have started at the beginning.  The story  made me feel like the character just ran in a huge circle, and didn’t really make any real forward progress at all.

Despite my complaints Lyon maneuvers her character smoothly across all the major plot points of the series with perfect timing and transitions.  Paige is a good character, and the conflicts she faces are well developed and engrossing. I cared about her as a person, and empathized with her as a mother, and enjoyed reading her story.

For more info on the series visit the Newport Ladies Bookclub Blog